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from Year One of the
Club (October 2006 to September 2007), Year Two (October 2007
to September 2008), Year
Three (October 2008 to September 2009), Year Four (October 2009
to September 2010), Year Five (October 2010 to September 2011), Year Six (October 2011 to September 2012), Year Seven (October 2012 to September 2013), Year Eight (October 2013 to September 2014) and Year Nine (October 2014 to September 2015)

To see many splendid
daguerreotypes documenting the Club’s antics, click here.

2nd October 2010

Wartime Poignance Moves Club Filmgoers

Our Film Night on 30th September was a double bill focusing
on the experience of new recruits in the Second World War. One was The New
Lot, an unusual official training
film—directed by Carol Reid, written by Peter Ustinov and starring Ustinov,
John Laurie, Raymond Huntley plus cameos from Ian Fleming, Eric Ambler, Robert
Donat and Bernard Lee. The film focuses on the sense of resentment many of the
recruits feel at the disruption to their lives, their fears and apprehensions,
and the way they ultimately pull together as a fighting unit. We never actually
see them engage—only in a exercise against the Home Guard—but by the end of
their training they feel seasoned enough to scoff at a romanticised war flick
in the cinema. The film was so popular it was later remade as the 1944 feature The
Way Ahead starring David Niven. Yet The
New Lot was actually thought to be lost
until a print turned up in the Indian Army archives.

By
contrast Overlord followed its
protagonists all the way to the D-Day landings, with unflinchingly tragic
consequences. The film was made much later, in 1975, but mixes period footage
with new sequences shot using vintage cameras. It’s a strange blend of
sometimes highly stylised personal sequences and raw battle footage that’s
mesmerising because you know it’s real. By the end there was more than one
moistened eye in the room. Many thanks to Mr Sean Longden for curating the
evening.

15th September 2010

Dubious Tie Offers Cushioned Head Support

A company has released a tie that can be inflated to turn it
into a pillow. It is woven from a mixture of silk and some ghastly modern
“microfibre” and contains a PVC bladder that can be blown up through a
mouthpiece. It can allegedly support a bonce of up to 25 pounds (immediately
raising the old problem of how exactly one weighs one’s head). Tragically their
reasoning is that “most functions that require a necktie deserve to be slept
through”, which is obviously heresy. The Pillow Tie will be available from
Firebox.com and Findmeagift.co.uk from October.

Buckinghamshire Man Claims Record For Fastest Piece of
Furniture

Eccentric inventor Perry Watkins hopes his record will be
accepted by Guinness World Records for the world’s fastest piece of furniture,
having driven a motorised Queen Anne dining table laid for silver service at
130mph. The vehicle, christened Fast Food, took a year to complete and is built
around a Reliant Scimitar boosted by a nitrous oxide kit—making for anything
but a comfy ride. “It was actually worse than I thought it would be,” said
Watkins. “It felt like 200mph.” (I’m not sure I know what 200mph on a table
feels like, but if anyone does it’s doubtless Mr Watkins.) He seizes the record
from a sofa that hit 92mph in 2007.

Mr
Watkins has a history of extreme vehicles, as well as bad puns. He is also the
creator of the Flatmobile, a rocket-powered car that is just 19 inches high,
and Windup, officially the world’s smallest car, a road legal partnering of a
Postman Pat coin-operated children’s ride with a quad bike engine. He has also
built a nine-foot motorised Dalek (which is also road legal).

8th September 2010

Club Celebrates the Life of a Wastrel Prankster

I like a joke as much as a the next man—unless the next man
is Horace de Vere Cole, who took practical joking to a national level when his
most famous gag infuriated not only the Royal Navy but even the King. Cole was
the subject for our guest speaker at the September meeting, Mr Martyn Downer,
who has recently written a book on Cole’s life. Born into a wealthy family at
the end of the 19th century, Cole’s desire was for a military career but a
serious wound in the Boer War ruled this out. So he did the next best thing and
went to Cambridge, where he fell in with a playful crowd who evidently brought
out the mischievous side of his nature. Their most infamous prank there was to
pass themselves off as The Sultan of Zanzibar and retinue, nipping into London
then travelling back on the train in costume to be welcomed by the Mayor of
Cambridge who gave them a tour of their own university. They got away with it
too—but this was clearly not enough for Cole, who immediately blabbed to the
press, then basked in the publicity, subsequently decking out his rooms like a
sultan’s palace.

But
the most audacious hoax Cole perpetrated was in 1910 when he and his chums
passed themselves off as Abyssinian princes (despite the fact that one of them
was a woman—Virgina Woolf) and demanded a tour of HMS Dreadnought, the flagship
of the Royal Navy. This was done partly to annoy William Fisher, an irritating
cousin of two of Cole’s friends, and executive officer aboard the ship. They
got away with it too, despite their fake facial hair beginning to slip as the
day went on and the fact that they were speaking a made-up language (with Cole
this time playing the role of Foreign Office minder; he’s the one in the top
hat in the slide you can see above)—through an absurd stroke of luck the one
officer on the ship who could actually speak the Abyssinian language was absent
that day. But, true to form, Cole immediately told the press again and the
hoaxers were lauded and reviled nationally in equal measure. Fisher himself led
a posse into London that succeeded in horsewhipping one of the party. While
Cole himself escaped with an extremely odd token gesture of satisfaction
(involving the two parties taking it in turns to lean over a dustbin and be
tapped on the backside six times by the other—psychologists would have a field
day), his subsequent career, while filled with further hoaxes, was also one of
slow decline and he died in obscure poverty. Yet there were postcards and even
a music hall song devoted to his finest hour of mischief, and not many of us
can say that.

My
thanks to Mr Downer and his publishers Black Spring. To find out more about
Cole’s extraordinary life, you can purchase the book, The Sultan of Zanzibar directly from the Black
Spring website.

A quick birthday toast is arranged
in honour of absent Member Annette Kippenham

1st September 2010

The Far Pavilions Meet the Salon d’Été for the Party
of the Century

We usually dream up a theme for our biannual parties then
try and find a vaguely appropriate venue, but this time, for our event on 21st
August, the venue came first—Salon d’Été, the nightclub set up in the spring by
Member Ed Saperia, employing other Members Willow Tomkins and Will Sprunt—and
the theme of colonial decadence naturally followed.

The Salon has a very central
London location, along one side of Selfridges, a stone’s throw from Bond Street
tube. And once you get past the dark, nameless frontage you suddenly find
yourself in an unexpected tropical paradise. The room used to be a church,
given away by the tall, distinctive windows at the front. The DJ booth used to
be the organ loft. The high vaulted ceiling is actually glazed and, with this
in mind, Ed and his team filled the place with tall palm trees, hanging baskets
of ivy and a living canopy of vines overhead. A machine constantly squirts out
mist, partly for the benefit of the plants but also because it creates cool
lighting effects. There is even one huge spotlight (dubbed the “sun”, I noted
on the lighting control computer screen) that shines through the mist and the
vines in spectacular rays. From its inception the idea of the Salon was to
create an old-fashioned supper club to attract a sophisticated crowd with a
vintage dress sense—in fact Luke, another of the men behind the Salon, told me,
as he surveyed our party, that this was precisely how they had always
envisioned the venue working.

Entertainment came not only from
our own Fruity
Hatfield-Peverel, DJing from his eyrie above the throng, but from the
wonderful Twin and Tonic who, despite missing one half of the Holland twins who
front the band, did a sterling job—as you can see by the pictures of manic
dancing (top prize for which must go to Sean Rillo Raczka, who was like a
Duracell bunny in his urge not only to unleash his happy feet but to get
everyone else up on theirs too. Thanks also to those who held Sean upright and
retrieved him when he crashed headlong through the doors of the tiny office
space, scaring the life out of the waitress within.)

Our balloon shaving contest was
won by a lady named Elena, who managed to get all the foam off the balloon
without bursting it in 55 seconds flat. It was rather a messy game, I admit.
The poppadom clay pigeon shoot was a big success—frankly you lot just like
shooting things, as far as I can tell. I’d fried up the poppadoms in the
afternoon and they were frankly a bit soggy by the time we came to open fire
with the famed NSC foam-dart gun, so it wasn’t quite as explosive as I’d hoped;
but one marksman did manage to punch a hole right through his target. Three contestants
scored two hits out of two darts, and in the play-off the winner was Max
Holloway, who plays saxophone in Twin and Tonic.

I’d
like to thank SW4 gin,
whose sponsorship enabled us to offer modestly priced G&Ts, Wilson’s of Sharrow, who supplied the
complimentary Snuff Bar, La Maison
Fontaine absinthe, who had a mobile absinthe fountain and were offering
free samples, and the kind suppliers of our raffle prizes: Pachacuti, suppliers of fine Fair Trade
Panama hats, Spencers Trousers,
purveyors of quality made-to-measure trousers, Huality Tailoring, who offered a bespoke
shirt, Murdock of London, who gave
two wet shave vouchers and also Messrs Sean Longden and
James Laurie for donating books. In fact by midnight the bar manager announced
that we’d drunk all 12 bottles supplied by SW4 plus the five bottles that the
venue had in stock. We also drank them out of beer and Pimms. Obviously the NSC
encourages responsible drinking, but one can’t help feeling a twinge or pride.

We were also lucky enough to have
a mobile photo studio set up to take portraits of guests in their finery. You
can see the results (and purchase prints) from Café Photo’s website.
Members can find many more photos in the full write up in the September
Newsletter.

I think this party will go down
in NSC history, not just because many dubbed it the best one yet, but also
because it can’t happen again—the venue closed down a fortnight later. I’m told
that Selfridges have bought the whole block to develop it. Mind you, there was
always a suggestion that the Salon was a “pop-up” club, there just for the
summer (there’s a clue in the name). In any case, it was a noble venture and I
sincerely hope the owners bring the same idea alive somewhere else.

Hirsuit Gentlemen Retain the Tashes Trophy

Earlier in the same day as the Far Pavilions party (see
above) was The Tashes, our annual cricket match between those with facial hair
and those without. It was pure coincidence that the two ended up on the same
day—the redoubtable Watermere is responsible for cricket matters—but it suited
many out-of-town Members rather well, being able to make a real weekend of it.
On this occasion it initially looked as if rain would stop play, and indeed
lunch was eaten with teeth somewhat gritted against precipitation, but the
match went ahead. For many years the yearly grudge match was dominated by the
Clean-Shaver Players, but last year the trophy went to their rivals, the
Hirsuit Gentlemen—and in 2010 they managed to hold on to it. Gone are the days
when the winning team received an enormous cheese courtesy of Hallamshire-Smythe
(then employed by the cheese industry) but the trophy of course means far more
than dairy wealth ever could. Full match report in the September Newsletter.

Despite the lowering clouds (top
photo) some cricket did get played

10th August 2010

The Psychopathology of Fancy Dress Explained

August’s get-together was arguably one for the ladies,
focusing as it did on (in the speaker’s own words) “lovely ladies in pretty
dresses”. In fact Evadne Raccat is not doing herself justice, as the oration
was an interesting analysis of a moment in the social history of fashion. The
talk looked at a ball held by the Duchess of Devonshire at her house on
London’s Piccadilly in 1897 in honour of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The
photographer James Lafayette set up a studio in a tent in the garden to
photograph guests meaning there are photographic records of the costumes, and
it is on these that Evadne based her talk. While men were strictly limited to
historically accurate outfits (the dress code was simply pre-1815) the ladies
were allowed far more latitude to be either historical or merely contemporary
with an historical nod, to show off wealth or be conservative, or to be daring
under the banner of historicity. The way the different women responded tells us
much about how they were choosing to present themselves within the code of
Victorian society. Many thanks to Evadne. NSC Members can read a full essay
version of the talk in the September edition of the New Sheridan Club
Newsletter.

29th July 2010

Booze Probed

The New Sheridan Institute for Alcoholic Investigation has
been busy this month. On Monday 26th July, our Drinks Correspondent Mr
Bridgman-Smith (see his exhaustive Martini monograph in our Essays section) and I
stepped boldly into the subterranean grotto that is Purl, a rather Dickensian-style bar in
Marylebone, London. They take the Victorian thing far enough to plan to give
their establishment the full Dickensian Christmas makeover this winter, and are
even planning to make up their own purl—which was a Victorian drink of mulled
ale flavoured with bitters and spiked with brandy, whisky or gin, and sometimes
with sweetened milk added. However, the drinks list by and large couldn’t be
more contemporary, specialising in what has been called molecular mixology
(after “molecular gastronomy” the roots-up science-based approach of chefs like
Heston Blumenthal and the man behind the movement Harry McGee). The idea is to
rethink from first principles how the flavours (or indeed the whole experience)
of a drink are delivered to the recipient.

We had time to inspect two
examples. Mr Hyde’s Fixer Upper is a
blend of rum, cola reduction and orange bitters: sounds normal enough, but the
blend is served in a flask that has had smoke pumped into it (see picture) and
then served to you in a bucket of dry ice. The dry ice is just for Gothic
effect but the smokiness has a distinct impact on the flavour, a flavour the
intensity of which I imagine you can control by how long you leave the flask
infusing before you uncork it.

The other drink we tried was
their Champagne and Caviar: not real
caviar (fish in cocktails is probably a no-no) but small pellets of mango and
pine purée mixed with sodium alginate (extracted from brown algae). A syringe
is used to deliver drops of this into a glass of calcium carbonate, which
causes a gel skin to form on the beads of purée. On the tongue this does indeed
have the consistency of salmon roe and bursts in the same sort of way.

The crazy guys from Purl also top
drinks with flavoured foam and use liquid nitrogen to make the coldest martini
in the universe. Drinks are around £7–9 and the venue is at 50/54 Blandford
Street, London W1U.

Sherry Surveyed

Then on Wednesday 28th July the Club sank to new lows of
depravity when five Members attended a sherry tasting at Gordon’s Wine Bar by
Charing Cross station in London, an event that kicked off at 10am. David
Hollander, Anton Krause, the Ultan of Arbracchan, Parson Woodforde and myself
all somehow arranged to be there and endured seven sherries, each with an
accompanying tapas course before finally staggering away at 4.30pm (well, I
did—some of my fellow clubmen decided to cleanse their palates with some more
booze…).

Sherry still suffers a bit of an
image problem, not just its association with aged aunts gripping a glass of QC
at Christmas, but also the assumption that it is an aperitif and nothing else.
A part of the mission is to persuade people that sherry is good with food.

For me the greatest revelation
was the pairing of Manzanilla and oysters, the very dry, fresh, acidic, sea-salt
tang of the sherry balancing perfectly with the maritime ozone rush of the
shellfish. White anchovies in vinegar were also served with the Manzanilla, and
again the sherry cut right through. Manzanilla, like the pale dry fino that
followed, is created by allowing a natural “flor”, a cap of yeast, to form on
the surface of the wine in the barrels. This keeps it from the air and, along
with the practice of keeping the liquid topped up as it evaporates, creates a
pale, light, fresh wine. With the progressively darker and more intense
sherries, a process of oxidation takes place (in time the protective flor
naturally breaks down, allowing the air in), adding what seemed to me an
aromatic and astringent flavour reminiscent of varnished wood (something you
would recognise if you are a fan of sherry-cask-aged malt whisky). The earlier
sherries we were given were made exclusively from the Palomino grape, but some
of the later ones also had some Pedro Ximenez in the mix, right up to the
sweet, sticky, almost tar-black Pedro Ximenez La Cilla which was served with
manchego cheese and chocolate-dipped loops of deep-fried dough. More pictures here.

The event was highly informative
and extremely good value. I gather that the Sherry Insitute is keen to
subsidise such events, especially promoting sherry as a food wine, so if you
would be keen to attend something similar email me so I can gauge the hunger
for it.

Membership Passes 300

A hearty huzzah goes out to Miss Faye Duffy who recently
became our 300th active Member. (In fact, more people that that have joined,
but we do lose a few each year to impecuniosity, fleeing the country or the
inexplicably lure of the training shoe. And in case you’re one of the last 25
or so whose Membership numbers are over 300—or indeed Mr Mark Gidman, the
holder of card no. 300—note that over the years some of the numbers have been
unassigned, most likely because a card was made up with a certain number but
spoiled or damaged and not used.)

Here’s
looking forward to the next 300.

The Newest Member?

The Committee would like to congratulate Grace and Harry
Iggulden on the arrival of Gwendolyn Matilda. We are not sure if this means she
automatically inherits NSC Membership, like British Citizenship. I think some
time poring over dusty ledgers is called for. (As if it weren’t always…)

NSC Boffins Earn Their
Stripes

There have been a number of academic gongs received among
our number recently. Miss Minna has recently acquired the letters MSC after her
name, in the field of librarianship. Meanwhile Compton-Bassett was handed a
well-deserved BA in War Studies from the University of Kent and Oliver Lane has
been awarded a BA, also in War Studies, by Wolverhampton University—and has
been accepted by King’s College, London, to embark on a Master’s. What a bunch
of clever clogs, eh?

Mrs Downer Wins Tea

You will recall that in July’s Newsletter we ran a
competition to win tea for two at the National Liberal Club, kindly offered by
food writer Ronald Porter, who believes the NLC offers the best value tea in
town. I am pleased to announce that the winner was Mrs Rachel Downer.

23rd July 2010

Rare Films Delight and Mystify Members and Guests

Thursday 22nd July saw our second film night in
three weeks, this time a reprise of Cally Callomon’s earlier bill of
documentaries, repeated so that some friends of his own could see it. The theme
was the eccentric, the outsider. One was a Yorkshire TV film from 1982
concerning a travelling knife-grinder, probably one of the last in the country,
After earlier exploits in his life travelling the world, working in a South
American silver mine, as you do, he returned to Blighty but continued to
travel, at first doing farm work and then learning the trade of knife-grinding.
He travels on a bicycle with a tent, camping for the night in all weathers,
cooking on a fire and reading by candlelight. His bike converts into a grinding
wheel (the vehicle is “heavy but well balanced” the narrator tells us) and with
the money he earns he buys tea, tobacco and meat—it’s true we never see him eat
vegetables and he takes about a tablespoon of sugar in his tea, and yet he is
hale and hearty at 70. He does like a drink and nips to the pub most
lunchtimes, though again the narrator insists he does not drink to excess. He
pays no taxes but never troubles the state, never sees a doctor. The police
“know him”, so it’s all right. He wouldn’t have it any other way, considering
himself a millionaire because he has all he wants. Cally told us that when he
showed the film at an outdoor festival once, he realised after a while that one
woman in the audience was weeping: she revealed that as a girl she remembered
the same man passing through her village every year. Then one day he stopped turning
up and, as she grew older, she began to think that she had imagined him
altogether. The film was vivid reminder that life really had been like that.
(Cally says he thinks that one day the man just dropped dead: undoubtedly how
he would have wanted to go.)

The second film, made in the
1970s, was altogether more sinister in tone and looked at an eccentric family
living a secluded life on a patch of woodland in greater London somewhere. The
father and his two sons are all knowledgeable about machines, seemingly
scratching a living repairing engines and the like. One son prefers steam power
(believing that it will come back because Britain has reserves of coal but not
of oil; he well be proved right). The father claims to be building a boat, and
they certainly have a good supply of machining and metal-working equipment in
their clearing. (It makes you realise that you assume someone living outside of
society must be getting back to nature, so all this machinery and blacksmithing
comes as a surprise, though it does lend a hellish flavour to the sinster
encampment. The father does hunt for game birds, but he uses a shotgun rather
than anything bucolic like snares.) There are two daughters also, who seem to
keep house. There are hints of incest and one daughter certainly dreams of
escape; in one scene she is at the wheel of a burned-out bus, fantasising about
driving away. They have a battered piano and a pipe organ and father and at
least one daughter can play. Every family member seems full of opinions and theories,
many of them barking mad. We wonder what happened to the mother.

There was a good turn-out for the
event of about 24 people: about as may as the room can comfortably hold. Cally
introduced the programme with his thoughts on “the English media’s need for our
‘eccentrics’ to be pre-packaged” and explained that these films actually showed
why outsiders really were likely to be outside: because more often than not
they are disturbing rather than loveable. Many thanks to him for a fascinating
show and one we are unlikely to see anywhere else.

21st July 2010

Sun Gods Smile on Bronzed Olympians

Those who have been with the Chap Olympics (or the Chap
Olympiad as it seems to be these days) will know that it has always changed
from year to year. From the beginnings as a ramshackle guerrilla gathering in
Regent’s Park, to the Hendrick’s-powered sponsored affairs in Bedford Square
(some would say a little too corporate), to the, erm, ramshackle guerrilla
gathering on Hampstead Heath (with the highly mystifying directions) to the
current return to Bedford Square Gardens under the Bourne and Hollingsworth
banner, the syle and emphasis has shifted even as the throng grows ever larger.
However, one thing has remained consistent: it always rains.

But the latest celebration of
sporting endeavour, on Saturday 17th July, broke fiercely with tradition—the
weather was delightful. Spectators lounged, Pimms was quaffed, burgers sizzled
on the smoky grill, all in the golden dappled light of a perfect summer’s
afternoon.

I sensed a few more tweaks from
last year. There seemed to be more tables and chairs laid on and, although I
was asked to open my bag at the gate, I did not not see the mass
confiscation of drink on the threshold that took place last year. (Of course,
there were a large number of hipflasks and hollow canes being deployed, but
this is only to be expected.)

In case you don’t know, the event
consists of a series of silly games, intended to test the players’ style,
panache, savoir faire and devious inventiveness. Athleticism is frowned upon
while cheating is admired. The most striking development this time was the
appearance of a stage, a raised platform upon which the games took place. I
assume there had been complaints that it was hard to see what was going on in the
past unless you were in the front rank of the mob that formed around the
action. Now we had neat rows of seats along the ringside. Of course from a
Health and Safety point of view it was an Accident Waiting to Happen: let’s get
loads of drunk people, make them totter around on broken bicycles while hitting
each other with umbrellas. On a raised platform. (At least they thought better
of that pit filled with poisoned spiked around the edges…) The subject of
spikes reminds me of the last event of the day, the steeplechase where
contestants semi-blindfolded by rubber animal masks carried other contestants
on their backs while trying to jump over picket fences that had been mostly
arrange upside down so that their grounding spikes pointed upwards. What could possibly
go wrong? Miraculously, as far as I know no one was hurt apart from a cut that
Farhan sustained to his finger during the (at times quite vicious) umbrella
jousting. But it did all make me wonder if Gustav had any kind of insurance in
place… A full report with several hundred daguerreoptypes will appear in the
August Newsletter. In the meantime, see the photo
album.

8th July 2010

Good Fortune Smiles on July Club Night

The talk at our latest Club Night was perhaps particularly
appropriate in the current economic climate, dealing as it did with How to
Increase Luck in Our Lives, delivered by
Eugenie Rhodes. (I think there were quite a few coves in the audience who had
recently been relieved of gainful employment and may well have been asking
themselves this very question.) When examining why it was that some people seem
to have all the luck (Kirk Douglas, for instance, seemed forever to be making
inexplicable decisions that turned out to save either his career or his life),
Ms Rhodes did not seem to rule out genuine luckiness, in a cosmic sort of sense
(this is someone who takes stockmarket tips from the faeries, don’t forget).
However, the bulk of her discourse focused on how we can, in a way, make our
own luck. As Helena Rubinstein once said, “There are no ugly women, only lazy
ones.”

Ms
Rhodes went on to look at the roles played variously by preparation (Warren
Buffet spends huge amounts of time absorbing information, even allegedly
interviewing car park attendants in companies he’s thinking of investing in),
persistence, (“The harder I work, the luckier I get,” Samuel Goldwyn once
said), observation, boldness and readiness. There is also the matter of
perspective—we may already by may be luckier than we realise, but perhaps tend
to focus on the unfortunate rather than the fortunate in our lives: so you
could become luckier at a stroke simply by looking at things in a different
way. The discourse prompted much lively debate around the Club for the rest of
the evening. Many thanks to Eugenie for her efforts.

3rd July 2010

Summer Party Date Announced

I am delighted to confirm that this year’s NSC summer party
will take place on Saturday 21st August at the Salon d’Été, the club
recently started by Members Ed Saperia and Willow Tomkins within the venerable
L’Equipe Anglaise on Duke Street in central London. See the picture on the
left. Oh yes. More details to follow.

Scion of Hallamshire-Smythe
Dispatched to Belgium

The Scion of Hallamshire-Smythe, pipe-smoker, stalwart of
The Tashes and all-round Good Egg, has had to flee the country, presumably
hounded by creditors, furious husbands and/or the friends of someone he killed
in a duel. A slave to the dairy industry, he used to be good for a wheel of
cheese or two for a Tashes prize, but now peddles some sort of heavily
processed yoghurt drink, I believe.

Anyway, he claims that his
company, a kingpin in the global Military/Industrial/Dairy Complex, requires
him to relocate with his family. We wish him the best of British luck in the
daunting land of moules frĒtes, chocolate and insanely strong beer (hmm,
doesn’t sound too bad, actually).

The good news is that this was
all a delightful excuse for a knees-up, so a troupe headed down to the Dover
Castle, the pub in Weymouth Mews that has become a traditional home for the
Club, though I can’t remember why, exactly. On this occasion it proved highly
inappropriate as it turned out to be shut (for “staff training”, we later
discovered), so we decamped to the nearby Stag—nothing much to recommend it
apart from its being open and not very far away, and indeed we found ourselves
heckled incoherently by children from a first floor window as we sat outside.

Most bizarrely of all, as we
relished our drinking-up time a car screeched to a halt where we sat and a
dapper gent, unseasonably dressed in a buttoned-up overcoat, jumped out and
asked if we wanted to buy any cigars. He had “just got back from Cuba” and “had
loads in the trunk”. (“Trunk”? Was he deep in an American gangster fantasy? Did
he have a shooter inside that overcoat? Was trying to muscle in on the
Fitzrovia cigar racket? Had he mistaken me for Pedro “The Humidor” Diablo?)
Personally I suspected that if the stoogies were legit then he wouldn’t be
pandering them on the fly to bibulous fops after closing time. No, he’d be
selling them on eBay like a respectable person. (Actually, I’m told you aren’t
allowed to sell tobacco on eBay, so don’t try it, kids.) I particularly liked
the fact that he described them as “starting at” £20 each—and going down from
there.

I could see Chris Choy was
tempted but in the end we all declined. We drained our glasses and H-S and his
young (and in some cases rather long-haired) chums headed off to Ronnie Scotts
for some of that modern “jass” music I’ve been hearing about. No good will come
of it.

Film Night Celebrates Historic Duel: Satisfaction
Received

Thursday 1st July saw the latest in our
burgeoning new run of film screenings, when Mr Anton Krause presented The Duellists, the 1977 Ridley
Scott adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s story about a pair of Napoleonic officers
who fought a series of duels over some 30 years. The tale itself was based on a
true story, and Scott was clearly at pains to represent the events and their milieu with as much historical accuracy as possible—indeed
the realism of the duels themselves is doubtless what appeals most about the
film to Mr Krause, an expert in such matters. The film was actually shot on a
meagre budget, which meant that there were some minor costume inaccuracies to
do with specific uniforms, but overall the standard was high.

Mr Krause took particular delight
in explaining to us how the evolving fashions for duelling weapons were
faithfully represented. The initial fights used the European shortsword,
essentially “a needle on a stick”, as Mr Krause put it; with no cutting edge
your strategy was simply to skewer your opponent, something that the insanely
pointy weapon could do so surgically that duellists might walk away from a bout
and not realise at first that they had been run through. A later duel fought
with sabres, by contrast, was long, bloody and clearly exhausting, until the
duellists could scarcely lift their heavy blades. Towards the end the duels
turned to pistols, including a final fight where the combatants scurry round
some woods firing at will like some team-building paintball excursion.

We had a good turn-out and once
again I was pleased to see total strangers wandering in for the fun. We chatted
afterwards and I sensed they might not actually join the NSC, but it was a good
opportunity to spread the word.

22nd June 2010

Club Member To Pedal for a Good Cause

Cally Callomon (who, you may remember, curated a Club Film
Night recently) is one half of a crack duo of velocipedists who will be cycling
from Land’s End to John O’Groats on a pair of 1885 penny farthings, to raise
money to help families who are riven by the curse of addiction in their ranks.
The pair will set off on 18th August this year, and expect to
complete their journey in 18 days, stopping at B&Bs and vowing to sample at
least one local cheese and one local beer every day. Mr Callomon will be taking
his 50-inch fixed-wheel Grafton Silent Compound Roadster, while his companion
Mr John Malseed (in truth a veteran of the Veteran Cycle Club) will be trusting
his behind to a Victor Roadster 52-inch fixed-wheel Ordinary Bicycle—and will
in fact be racing it the very day after the epic journey, in the three-hour
Knutsford race that happens once a decade and attracts some 80 penny farthings.

For more about the challenge they
are calling Toe-to-Head (“cycling
the length of the UK on tuppence ha’penny”—which is true when you think about
it), to pledge your sponsorship, and to track the pair’s progress, keep a
weather eye on their website.

Matthew Howard Treads Lightly Through Eastern Civic
Turmoil Hotspot

Fingers were crossed and buttocks clenched as Committee
Member Matthew “The Chairman” Howard launched into his talk, The Big Siam:
Oriental Excess in the East Indies, at our
monthly meeting for June. Billed as the Second Lady Malvern Memorial
Lecture—after a P. G. Wodehouse character who penned a book entitled India
and the Indians after the briefest of stays
there. The first Lady Malvern lecture was Mr Howard’s own The Manners
And Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Revisited), extensively researched over two weeks in the Sinai Peninsula and two
days in Cairo, and his latest pronouncements were just as well grounded,
offering an analysis of the life and culture of the Thai people, based on a
fortnight’s holiday.

Mr Howard’s experiences were
presented as those of a naif innocently wandering into a den of iniquity
(although he did have Mrs Howard there to keep him out of trouble)—from his
assumption that the crowd of red-shirted demonstrators were Manchester United
fans, to the cheerful acceptance that this Louis Vuitton luggage must be
genuine, to his gentle curiosity over exactly what the young lady was going to
do with that ping-pong ball… The chief lessons seem to be that luxury is
available in the Orient but at a price that can be alarmingly high, in both
pecuniary and moral terms.

It’s always touch-and-go as to
whether our high-tech audio-visual system will actually work, but on this
occasion it did us proud, which was just as well as the guts of the talk lay in
the succession of visual punchlines—the snap of the plane that jetted him to
Siam was an old BOAC kite; the contrast between the Thais’ heart-felt reverence
for their king and the Sex Pistols’ reinterpretation of our own Queen’s
image—for which reason, I am not really able to print an essay version of the talk
this time, though you can see some of the slides well enough in the relevant
set on the Club flickr page.

Many thanks to The Chairman for
his hugely amusing oration.

22nd May 2010

Wild Romance of the Roaring Twenties Revived on the
Silver Screen

Our Film Night this month was curated by the Earl of Essex
and showcased the 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby, starring Robert
Redford and Mia Farrow. The film takes place one sweltering summer in 1920s
upstate New York, following struggling bond salesman (yes, really) Nick
Carraway as he takes a house for the season across the water from his cousin
Daisy and her husband Tom. Nick’s neighbour turns out to be super-wealthy Jay
Gatsby, who had a fling with Daisy when he was a poor army officer and has
never got over her. Daisy scarcely seems happy with her philandering husband,
but will she respond to Gatsby’s suggestion that she leave Tom for him? We
never exactly find out where Gatsby’s new-found wealth comes from, though the
suggestion is that he is a bootlegger; in any case the suggestion is that new
money is never as good as old money—and a world better than no money (“rich
girls don’t marry poor boys”, Daisy sums it up). And whatever factors are
involved money vincit omnia.

The
main feature was preceded by two short documentaries, collections of period
footage showing what the 1920s “flapper” scene was like. I have to say that
without these, one might have wondered just how realistic the party scenes in The
Great Gatsby really were—but there were
bang on. On top of this, Essex gave us a spoken introduction, both to the
concept and significance of the flapper and to the main film. Some of this
knowledge will be reproduced in the June edition of the Club Newsetter.

After
the screening Essex gave a prize (in this case the DVD we had just watched) to
the best 1920s outfit in the room. Which was won by my wife. All entirely above
board, I assure you. Many thanks to Essex for organising the event.

Chocks Away As Club Remembers Messrs Rolls and Royce

The room seemed to fill with the heady scent of aero fuel
and the roar of engines as Mr Rob Loveday took to the podium at our May monthly
meeting to address us on The History of the Rolls Royce Aero Engine. In the case of the roar, this was real—Mr Loveday
didn’t quite stretch to hauling an engine up the stairs and firing it up, but
he did have some video footage of planes in action complete with sound. In fact
this unabashed Boy’s Own tone
characterised the whole address, which focused not on “camshafts and cubic
capacities”, as he put it, as on tales of the derring do that was enabled by
the engines in question.

We learned about the early successes with racing seaplanes
of the 1930s, of the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic, by John Alcock
and Arthur Whitten Brown in a Vickers Vimy with Rolls Royce engines (16 hours
and 12 minutes in an open cockpit so cramped that their shoulders were rammed
together), and about the wartime exploits of the RR engines that powered such
heroic craft as the Lancaster bomber—and, embarrassingly, some early German
planes too, thanks to a trusting decision to lend the Krauts some of our
engines to play with shortly before the war.

Owing to a cock-up by the
management, who realised that they couldn’t let us use the room on the
Wednesday because builders would be in, we had had to move the event a day
forward at the last minute; as a result the turn out was lower than we have
enjoyed in recent months. This was a great shame as Mr Loveday did a splendid
job and delivered an exemplary lecture. Many thanks to him for his efforts.

5th May 2010

Compton-Bassett Achieves Majority

Habitués of our physical meetings—or indeed those who look at the
pictures, or even those who happened to see the “Chap of the Month” in the
inaugural issue of The Chapette, bound within the latest The Chap—will be
familiar with Lord Finsbury Windermere Compton-Bassett.

Well he’s all growed up now. Last
Saturday, 1st May, his 21st birthday was celebrated with a pub crawl around St
James’s. I say “crawl”, but I’m fairly sure they had started at the Red Lion in
Crown Passage, where we found them, and where they still were when we left just
before closing time. But never mind: the true journey is the inner one. All
together now, “For he’s a jolly good fellow..!” More pictures at the Club Flickr
page.

Club Honoured by ‘Mad Men’

Followers of the television drama series Mad Men may be aware that at an official website
there’s a rather engaging time-wasting application that lets you create your Mad Men avatar,
yourself as you would be in the show’s social and historial milieu, rendered in a period graphic
style. One of the options is the choice of tie. Bizarrely enough, of the
handful of patterns on offer one seems to be the NSC Club tie. To see what we
mean, have at look at the interpretations of Club Chairman Torquil Arbuthnot on
the left. I think you’ll agree it’s uncannily lifelike.

Messing About In Boats

I don’t know who originally hatched the idea of a group trip
to Oxford on the weekend closest to St George’s Day—it’s organised through the
Chap Room rather than an official NSC thing—but we’ve been doing it for five
years now. There isn’t so much flag waving these days (cross of St George in
our case, Isle of Man flag in Rushen’s if he’s around), but one thing that has
so far never changed is the weather—considering the deluge that’s characterised
the May Day weekend, it’s amazing that the previous one was so sun-kissed. I
think this proves categorically that God is an Englishman.

Anyway, we assembled, as tradition
dictates, at the Turf Tavern, a splendid ancient alehouse tucked away down a
maze of alleyways. After a few sharpeners we proceeded to the Magdelen Bridge
Boathouse and stripped them of five of their punts. They never seem to bat an
eyelid when a bunch of fops in tweed, blazers and boaters descend, but I guess
this is Oxford.

The picnic site that we now regard as
ancestral is by what’s known as the Rainbow Bridge. We go there, rather
unromantically, mainly because it’s near to some public conveniences but it
allows for an eventful trip, nosing our way through the winter’s fallen
branches (a part that always reminds me of Apocalypse Now—particularly the way
the native canoes filled with painted savages part to let us through as we
approach the corpse-strewn lair of the now insane Senior Sub), and then there
are the dreaded rollers. Fortunately my punt came equipped with Laurence, who
took great delight in pulling the punt over pretty much single-handed.

Senior Sub himself is now resident
in Oxford, which oddly means we see even less of him on the punt picnics. In
the past he has managed to pop by, shadowing us by bicycle as we poled along.
This time he was part of a play that had a matinée performance, so he wasn’t
present at all, though by chance we did bump into him coming out of a cake
shop. However, our escort was there again, in the form of Mr Henry Ball and chums.
I’m hoping that, as the years pass, the crowd following us from the bank will
grow until all of Oxford appears to watch balefully as we glide by.

The return journey is always more
eventful on account of the exotically high Champagne levels in the blood.
Laurence tragically slipped while punt-hauling and rolled around in goose poo
for a bit. And every year someone falls in—this time Rupert stepped up to the
plate (see the front cover).

After that it was back to the
Turf for thousand more ales and then Oblivion… St George would been proud. More
pictures on Flickr.

Chow Offer

Club Member Baron Christopher Patrick Wilhelm Solf II writes
to offer Members an enticing deal:

“I am currently in the process of
setting up my own restaurant in the Lake District,” he says. “To be precise, in
Lazonby, four miles from the town of Penrith, in a public house that serves
fantastic local real ale and a correctly fashioned Gin and Tonic. I wish to
offer all members of the New Sheridan Club a 10% discount on food purchases
upon the production of a membership card. I would appreciate it if you could
allow members of the New Sheridan Club to know about this should they decide to
holiday in the Lakes as it would also be a pleasure to partake in a pipeful
with fellow members.”

So if you are expecting to find
yourself in the vicinity of Lazonby, why not contact Baron Solf at cpwsolf [at] hotmail.com?

Handlebars and Herringbone

On 10th April London was graced by a debonair swarm of
bicyclists. They assembled at the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Grounds at the
Chelsea College of Art and Design, then pedalled decorously on a 12-mile route,
stopping off along the way at Geo. F. Trumper for a Best Moustache prize, in
Kensington Gardens for a spot of tea (accompanied by a string trio), H.
Huntsman & Sons on Savile Row for the Best Outfits prizes, then heading to
The Bathhouse in Bishopsgate for a party that included entertainment by our own
Mr B. The Gentleman Rhymer, Top Shelf Jazz, DJ Tom Kerwin and a team of swing
dancers.

This was The Tweed Run, “a
metropolitan bicycle ride with a bit of style”, as the organisers call it. Last
year was the first outing, but it’s clearly a slick operation (copyright “Tweed
Run LLP”) which they already plan to repeat in Toronto and New York. The site even has a shop to peddle pedalling
merchandise under the Tweed Run brand. Mind you they also raised £1,400 for
Bike4Africa, a charity that takes second-hand bicycles to the continent for
redistribution.

Club Member Fleur de Guerre went
along as a correspondent for The Chap:
at her blog you can read of
her battle with irate taxi drivers and skirt-lifting winds and her triumphs of
long-haul cycling and gin drinking. Note also that if you like this sort of
thing there is also the Tweed Cycling Club
who do it all year round.

9th April 2010

Club Discovers Its Place in History of Clubland

April’s meeting was a hearty and—for at least the third
month in a row—encouragingly packed affair. It’s always good to see so many new
faces, guests and first-timers. At this rate we may need to find a bigger
venue.

Our guest speaker was Mr Seth
Thevoz, delivering London Clubs 1870–1910,
a version of a talk he previously unleashed at the Institute of Historical
Research last summer. He told how the London club scene rose from the coffee
houses, enabling often middle class men to have a taste of luxury in the form
of the well-located and appointed town house that was their club’s premises. At
the tradition’s heyday there were hundreds of clubs in London, the best known
ones centred around Pall Mall and St James’s—“Clubland”.

Although the club houses were in
some cases surprisingly small, the political importance of some clubs could be
huge. In the days before actual membership of political parties, membership of
clubs with particular political leanings was the nearest thing. But the
connection with political developments goes further. At the outset just one in
15 men had the vote, and each new reform would bring a club for the newly
enfranchised (who were often shunned by the established clubs, presumably as
suspicious arrivistes).

In time there were clubs for
women too and a surprising number of mixed clubs. The latter actually declined,
partly because of Oscar Wilde’s downfall: when, after the scandal broke, it
became known that both he and his wife were members of a mixed-sex club, it
heavily dented the reputation of both that club and co-ed clubs in general. By
the 1920s there were very few clubs admitting men and women; it wasn’t until
the 1970s that mainstream clubs, heavily in decline and in need of any boost
they could get, started to allow women in.

Seth treated us to various
cartoons (Wife to club-loving husband: “What do you mean by coming home at his
hour?” Husband: “Everywhere else was closed”) and anecdotes, such the one about
F. E. Smith who used to stop off at the National Liberal Club every day on his
way home from Parliament to use the lavatories. When finally accosted by a
porter who asked him if he was actually a member of the club he replied, “Good
God, you mean it’s a club as well?” This joke has been told substituting many
clubs and sometimes a different central character, but was apparently a
reference to the brown tiles in the Liberal Club.

Many thanks to Seth for his
engaging and informative oration.

31st March 2010

Bells Ring Out For First Club Wedding

On Saturday 27th March a momentous event took place on the
Isle of Man—Juan Waterson (aka Viscount Rushen) married Helena Perry (aka Lady
Windermere). This is arguably the very first Club Wedding, in the sense that
the bride and groom began courting through the NSC, both being Members when
they met. Huzzah! A full report will be in the April Newsletter; in the
meantime you can see a full dageuerreotype album at the Club
Flickr page.

Makers of the Harris Tweed have been overwhelmed by the
level of interest in their “timeless” cloth by fans of the cult television show
Doctor Who. Matt Smith, the 11th doctor, will wear a traditional Hebridean
hand-woven jacket in the new series. Since the outfit was revealed in July,
interest in the fabric has risen.

David Reid, a director of Harris Tweed Textile
Manufacturing Ltd, said the choice had created a “massive opportunity” for the
industry. Smith's jacket is a vintage 1960’s piece made of genuine Harris
Tweed. The particular weave is now set to be revived and is likely to be
marketed to Doctor Who fans after the new series, which begins in April.

Mr Reid said tweed manufacturing, the biggest private
sector employer in the Hebrides, had been struggling in recent years. “We've
been deliberately trying to market Harris Tweeds to younger people and in one
fell swoop we've seen this. We’re absolutely delighted to be associated with
Doctor Who in this way.” Mr Reid added that the “magical” cloth was ideal for
the Time Lord because it had “romance and spiritualism” running through it.

Reid said his company, which employs about 20 people
on the Isle of Lewis and works with about 50 weavers, was creating new,
lighter, softer cloths in response to the recent interest, to appeal to younger
people and women. Islanders hoped to see an influx of visitors wanting to see
where the tweed was made.

Western Isles MP Angus MacNeil said: “This exposure
represents a serious opportunity for Harris Tweed. A marketing campaign to
generate equivalent interest would cost millions of pounds; there is a strong
chance that we need to be ready for a dramatic rise in orders.”

He added: “The endorsement by Dr Who shows that
Harris Tweed is timeless and can be worn anytime, at any age and in any
galaxy.”

18th March 2010

Likenesses on Offer to Members

Two new Members, Mr and Mrs Craig Fraser, have made an
interesting offer. “My wife and I are both quite accomplished artistes,” he
writes, “and I was thinking that if any members of the New Sheridans
wanted a pencil portrait or an acrylic portrait done, my wife and I would be
more than happy to oblige. All we would need is a photo in the exact position
the member required and we could throw something together in a nice small
portrait, probably in the style of those regency thumb paintings they handed
around to snatch a suitor.” So if you’re looking to land yourself an eligible
spouse this could be just the ticket.

You can see here a couple of
samples of Mr Fraser’s work (left) and that of his wife (below). Mr Fraser says
that for a small portrait there would be no charge, though if you wanted a
larger work in acrylics then something could be arranged. If this interests
you, you can contact the Frasers at Craigfraser84 {at} hotmail.com.

The Waters of Life Flow Through Fitzrovia

Last night Mr Neil Ridley, drinks correspondent for The
Chap and also a roving whisky ambassador
for Diageo, gave a whisky tasting for the Club at the Wheatsheaf, the London
shebeen where we have our regular monthly meetings. It was a packed house—Mr
Ridley nearly ran out of glasses (he should have known better than to
underestimate the Club when it comes to free alcohol). He took us through the
basics of what whisky is, its history (the name comes from the Gaelic for
“water of life”—there is an Irish saying that what whisky and butter can’t
cure, can’t be cured) and the huge variety of flavours on offer, from the light
and fruity lowland malts through to the huge smoky island offerings.

The four main drams on offer were
Glenkinchie 12-year-old, Dalwhinnie 15-year-old, the Singleton of Dufftown
12-year-old and Talisker 16-year-old. There was also a mystery whisky, which
turned out to be Japanese and which I thought was exquisite, incredibly
delicate and nuanced. We also learned how expedience led to whisky being
matured in oak barrels previously used by other drinks industries, such as
sherry and port but especially the American bourbon business, wherein no barrel
may be used more than once and the spent casks are now routinely dismantled and
shipped to Scotland to be reassembled and used for whisky storage.

Mr Ridley brought with him an
array of props and samples, including barley grains and grist, samples of
sherry and bourbon and some lumps of peat of the kind that is sometimes burned
to dry the grain, imparting a distinct peat smoke aroma. One such piece of peat
was, by chance, rather alarmingly shaped. Modesty forbids me to go into details
in case ladies may read this, but gentleman of stout constitution can see the
unexpurgated daguerreotypes at the Club’s
Flickr page.

Club Art Collection Expanded

I discretely draw your attention to a new addition to our Club Portraits. The
Curé Michael Silver has chosen to appear in Millais’ portrait of the artist
John Ruskin. Well, they have the same hat, so it makes sense.

I
would take this opportunity to remind Members that the portrait service is
offered free to all those in the Club. All you have to do is identify an
existing image, whether famous or not, painting, photograph, cave art (I draw
the line at sculpture, which is currently beyond the capabilities of Photoshop)
in which you would like to appear. Then you can either send us a photograph of
yourself in exactly the same pose as the figure you would like to replace, or
we can take such a photograph ourselves if you can make it along to one of our
meetings.

24th February 2010

And On the Subject of Film Nights…

I can now report that, after the success of our first one at
the new venue, The Compass,, we now have two more scheduled.

Oh
Thursday 15th April Count Martindt Cally Von Callomon will present
two documentaries about eccentrics, The Moon and the Sledgehammer (1971) and The Knife Grinder (early 1980s). Of them he says: “In The Great
Celebrity Revolution (1995–the present day) our eccentrics have become
packaged, classifiable, quantifiable, commodifiable and available for hire at
the drop of a TV contract. This was not always so. Though today’s demands are
for cuddly outrageous anti-social losers that live out our own misery by proxy,
there was a time when our ‘eccentrics’ were shunned or forgotten by their very
nature at not being willing to fit the mould.”

Then,
on Thursday 20th May, the Earl of Essex will treat us to the 1974 Oscar-winning
adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal American novel The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern and
Nick Carraway, preceded by some shorts about 1920s flappers.

13th February 2010

Film Nights Rise Joyously From the Ashes

A hearty hurrah for Ms Evadne Raccat, who curated the first
Film Night in our latest series. The main feature was Mr Skeffington, starring Bette Davis as a spoilt society beauty,
teasing suitors while doting on her ne’er-do-well brother—until he embezzles
money and she is forced to marry for the cash. Her ageing and the loss of her
beauty are a central theme, one that, as Ms Raccat pointed out, crops up in a
number of Davis’s films. Not only did she allow herself to be filmed without
make-up during the diphtheria scenes but after that, irreversibly ravaged by
the disease, she was made up with fake latex wrinkles to look even older. Her
long-suffering husband is played by Claude Rains.

Two
shorts were presented before this, both vintage cartoons. One was a strange
snapshot of the nightspot Ciro’s, the place for movie stars to be seen at the
time, in which animated caricatures of celebs goofed around with no plot to
speak of. The game is to see how many you recognise. The other animation was What’s
Opera, Doc? a glorious Bugs Bunny cartoon
in which Elmer Fudd is Siegfried from Wagner’s Ring opera cycle—and yet still hunting rabbits, this time
summoning thunderbolts as a weapon. Things take a strange turn when Bugs
disguises himself as Brunhilde and Elmer is smitten. The film has been voted
the best animated short of all time.

The
new venue turned out very well so, assuming they’ll have us back, I expect that
we be returning there soon. Thanks to Evadne for organising it: I think that
she’ll be penning some observations on the films for the next Newsletter.

8th February 2010

One-Armed Bandit Steals Single Cufflink

A one-armed thief is being hunted by police for stealing a
single cufflink from a jewellery shop. The thief was pretending to look for a
gift when he knocked boxes of cufflinks to the floor and took one in the shape
of a boxing glove. The gold cufflink from CJ Vinten in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, is
worth £120. PC Steve Wells said, “We hope the public will help us identify this
man.” Mind you, in one report he is described at wearing a “dirty bomber
jacket”, so it’s unlikely he’s a gentleman who lost an arm in the war (or a
duel) and is desperate to impress a lady. He could even be about to detonate a
“dirty bomb” and needed the gold from the cufflink to manufacture some devious
relay for the device. (Mind you he may simply have crawled straight from the
dirty bomber in which he crashed, and felt the need to spruce himself up a bit
before presenting himself at the RAF Club. So many possibilities.)

7th February 2010

Gentleman Dissected At Club Night

The Club’s February meeting was an upliftingly well-attended
affair; included in the throng were a number of guests, including a French
photographer who had covered the Chap Olympics for Le Figaro, and also a couple of groups who just happened to be
in the pub and were curious as to what was going on upstairs.

Our
guest speaker was Mr Robert Brook, delivering a talk On Being A Gentleman, one which he had previously given last September at
Interesting ’09, a symposium of, well, interesting discourses that sounds like
a whole year of NSC Turns rolled into one. (Mr Brook has no prior connection
with the Club; a friend of mine knew him and had heard about his speech.) His
talk was really an exploration of the manifold meanings that the term can have:
is a gentleman defined by birth, by behaviour, by dress? Then there is the
obituary term—“yet he remained, above all, a gentleman”. The term can mean that
despite having none of the appearance, manner, lifestyle, background or
circumstances of a gentleman there can be an aspect of one’s personality that
makes one one. Meanwhile someone else can mire themselves in all manner of
shady dealings and frankly blackguardly behaviour, yet remain a gentleman
precisely because of his appearance, manner, lifestyle, background or
circumstances.

There
was no real conclusion to all of this: it was really a celebration of this
peculiarly English concept (Mr Brook gave examples of foreign observers who, in
attempting to define the gentleman, seemed to accept that England was the
spiritual home of the idea). Our speaker clearly felt that gentlemanliness was
an ideal that very much still had a place-indeed that the 21st century had a
strong need for it. He suggested that the people in the room were doing good
work in keeping it alive, though he also commented that he was glad he could
see the exit, so who knows what he really made of us? All in all a splendid and
thoughtful talk and our gratitude goes to Mr Brook for taking the time to
deliver it to us.

13th January 2010

Film Night Returns Yet Again

Following the loss of our previous venue (it closed down—we
didn’t raze it), our regular films nights are, I hope, set to rise again,
phoenix-like, as we have found a new venue. It is The Compass, 58 Penton Street (on the
corner of Chapel Market), in London’s Islington, near to Angle tube station. We
have secured the upstairs room, where there is a projector and screen for
playing DVDs. The venue is a busy, tastefully decorated gastro-pub so we’ll be
able to chow down in style. We have the place till 11pm.

Our
first event is on Thursday 11th February, and the programme is one
that Ms Evadne Raccat was scheduled to present before the old venue shut
unexpected. First up is What’s Opera, Doc?
a 1957 Bugs Bunny ten-minute Looney Tune cartoon revolving around Wagner.
Considered by many to be Chuck Jones’s masterpiece—and by some as one of the
finest animated shorts of all time—it features Elmer Fudd as Siegfried, yet
still fixated on hunting rabbits. The usual chase takes an odd turn as Bugs
disguises himself as Brunhilde and Elmer is smitten…

The evening’s feature
presentation is the 1944 Bette Davis/Claude Rains movie Mr Skeffington, in which Davis portrays a society beauty who, when
her feckless brother is exposed as an embezzler, is obliged to marry for money.
Ms Raccat describes the film as “a little-known picture that is rather modern
in its approach to story-telling. Bette Davis allows herself to become a
monster in a way that would merit an Oscar and the description ‘brave
performance’ these days. It’s also quite funny and has a dark side too.
Pre-figures Davis’ performance as Baby Jane and in later horror movies.”

9th January 2010

Rapier-Like Performance From Mr Krause

At our January meeting Mr Anton Krause treated us to a
lecture on Duelling For Dummies: The European Sword in Personal Conflict. Mr Krause, as you may remember, was one half of the
pair who demonstrated Bartitsu, the Victorian walking-stick martial art, at our
last summer party, Tempting Fźte—where I seem to remember that he was always on
the receiving end of the gentlemanly violence. By day he teaches stage
fighting, both armed and unarmed, and arranges fights (for stage, I mean, not
just in pub car parks). To illustrate his talk he brought a number of stage
swords (cunningly transported in a guitar case), although he lamented that his
favourite rapier was not with him, having been half-inched by someone at the
theatre. One pities the soul when Mr Krause catches up with him.

Duels, we learned, are almost
always illegal, and that this law is almost always ignored. While they are
seldom fought specifically to the death, they are seldom fought specifically
just to “first blood”—except in France, where duelling seems to have been more
of a fashion accessory than a defence of honour. Mostly they are fought till
one party cannot continue. And they were still going on in the early 1900s. Mr
Krause took us through the development of the weaponry: and it seems that the
message is that speed is of the essence. Duels started with lumbering medieval
fights with broadswords or hand-and-a-half “bastard” swords, moving to the use
of the rapier—actually heavier and slower than you probably think, leading to
the partnering of it with a dagger in the other hand for parrying. We heard
how, in unplanned street fights one’s cloak could be put to use as a parrying
device (hence “cloak and dagger”). The rapier developed into the small sword,
the ultimate duelling blade. It had been realised that slashing strokes were
slower and more telegraphed than thrusting moves, and the small sword was all
about thrusting. It was light enough to be used for attack and defence and
would develop into the foil of modern-day fencing.

The rules seem to have been quite
complex. You can only challenge someone to a duel if they were your social
equal. Contrary to popular belief you do not challenge someone by slapping them
round the chops with your gloves. Instead you throw you gloves at his feet
(“throwing down the gauntlet”) and if he wanted to accept the duel he picked
them up and slapped you round the chops.
For all that, once the fighting started more or less anything goes: punching,
kicking, gouging… Because duels typically took place at dawn (when other people
were less likely to be about) the duellers sometimes held lanterns—which could
be deployed as weapons too.

I would like to thank Mr Krause
for a fascinating and well-received lecture.

11th December 2009

Monocles making a come-back?

The high street optician Vision Express is to start stocking
monocles, at least in its central London stores, following a surge of requests
from young men. Management sound perplexed about the trend but are prepared to
roll them out across the country (not literally) if the interest is there.
Monocles have never been entirely unavailable; you can buy an optical eyeglass
from Dead
Men’s Spex, Daniel
Cullen or Peter
Christian. They were highly popular before the war (despite, or perhaps
because of, a 50% tax hike on them by the Irish Free State) and armed forces
regulations restricted them to officers until 1943, but their popularity with
German infantry officers apparently dented their appeal after that.

Writing in the Telegraph, eyeglass-wearer Gerald Warner opines: “An
Englishman traditionally favours a gold-rimmed eyeglass with a gallery to hold
it in place, attached to a black cord (my own practice). The degenerate French
seducer will most likely sport his on a broad ribbon. Rimless eyeglasses are
Prussian or Ruritanian. The Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, who wore the much
more civilian-style pince-nez all his life, disliked monocles so intensely as
symbols of strutting Prussian arrogance that he once refused to promote an
Austrian general who sported one. P G Wodehouse himself set out the rules for
eyeglasses in fiction: “Monocle: This may be worn by (1) good dukes (2) all
Englishmen. No bad man may wear a monocle.” Warner also points out that Nancy
Mitford declared the term “monocle” to be Non-U while “eyeglass” was U.

10th December 2009

Chaps, stuck for a Christmas gift for a lady?

Ladies apparently like to be showered with gewgaws, so if
you’re trying to impress a filly that might be a good strategy. Of course,
being a gentleman you haven’t a clue about jewellery—hence the appeal of the
moustache ring. It is technically jewellery but, featuring as it does a
splendid tash, you can feel you’re on familiar territory. And while she’s
wearing it it’ll remind her of you (assuming you have a similar moustache—and
if not, how come you haven’t skulked off to join the Foreign Legion yet?).
Don’t attempt to style, wax or trim it, however. It is made of acrylic. It is
available from Tatty
Devine (who also sell a moustache necklace) or In
All Her Finery for a recession-busting £9.

6th December 2009

Anarcho-Dandyism Celebrates Ten Years

Saturday 5th December saw a rare thing—a party
hosted by The Chap magazine (the last
one was five years ago). The occasion was the magazine’s tenth anniversary and
the setting was Conway Hall in London’s Red Lion Square. It was an apt venue,
its 1940s style perfectly complementing the Chappist tone, and a good size to
accommodate the hordes of revellers. In the main hall we saw dancing duo The
Bees Knees, swingsters Twin and Tonic and the Zen Hussies, plus the inimitable
Mr B. the Gentleman Rhymer who had the crowd roaring for more. In Louise
Quatorze’s oriental Mao Tse Tung Lounge we were treated to Atters’ splendid
paranormal lecture and the crooning of Antony Elvin. And of course Gustav
Temple himself addressed the masses at ten o’clock; his message seemed to be
that Phase One of the glorious revolution—the spreading of the sartorial
word—was going well and the time had come for Phase Two. Which seemed to
involved the removal from society of Chris Moyles, Katie Price and Elton John.
Oddly specific. One wonders if there was something in the gin which, combined
with cunning hypnotic tricks, might mean that all over the country revellers
are waking up today with an inexplicable urge to go out and do murder. I must
switch on the noctovision and see if a mysterious well-dressed crowd has
gathered outside Moyles’ house waving candlesticks and cut-throat razors
menacingly.

Club Bathed in Hellfire

Lord Rupert addressed a packed room at our last monthly
meeting of the year on 2nd December. His subject was Sir Francis
Dashwood and Rupert’s thesis is that an incident on his Grand Tour, when he was
scared witless by a “demon” which turned out to be a cat, and the subsequent
publicising of this embarrassing affair by a clergyman, was what turned
Dashwood against all things to do with the Church. There followed a period of
partying designed to outrage good folk with its decadence, often in the cave
complex Dashwood had constructed, wherein revellers were allowed to penetrate
deeper in accordance with their acceptance into the inner diabolical core. In
the end, after one scandal too many, his Hellfire Club fell foul of internal
politics. Its secrecy compromised by public accusations, the whole thing
fizzled out. To what extent Dashwood was really into deviltry, rather than just
partying, is difficult to tell for sure, but Rupert clearly revels in the
demonic possibilities. Many thanks to him for his talk.

‘Yes We Can-Can’ Really Can

The famous English sense of fair play got a good airing on
Saturday 21st November when the New Sheridan Club chose the
French—our natural enemies—as the theme for the latest of our biannual parties.
(It was what in the past would have been billed as a “Christmas Party”, but no
date in December seemed suitable and Idon’t
think it’s on to use the C-word for any event outside of that month.) Many
guests commented afterwards that they though it the best party yet.

We were back at the Punch Tavern
on Fleet Street, scene of the Kredit Krunch Kabaret last year. But all Teutonic
hints had been banished and the place decked out in red, white and blue, the
tables strewn with garlic cloves and snail shells. Guests rolled up as auteurs and onion sellers, aristocrats and revolting
peasants. The 1952 film Moulin Rouge played silently in the background while a
programme of Gallic music, specially prepared by International DJ MCFruity (Hatfield-Peverel), crooned
from the tannoy.

Spicing
up the evening were live performances from chanteuse Mademoiselle Maria (bearing a suspicous resemblance
to Fraulein Maria from last Christmas…), and stand-up comedian Marcel Lucont,
the embodiment of French charm, hauteur and misanthrophy who was bemused to see so many people dressed as the
French without one genuine Frenchman in the building. (Afterwards, as he dashed
off to another gig, he told me how nice the party was and how he regretted having
to leave—you can imagine how preferable the refined and affable NSC crowd must
be to the average late-night comedy audience…)

Our
first game was Pin The Legs Back On The Frog. One might have guessed that our
players were expressing their Frenchness by finding this concept alien—yet the
best attempt actually came fromMarcel
himself. Of course being a performer, and French, he was not allowed to win.

Then came Onion Battle, derived
from the game Orange Battle believed to have been invented, or at least
recorded, by Sid G. Hedges (1897–1974), author of many books and articles on
swimming, games and wholesome home entertainments for young people. Each player
must balance an onion in a spoon held in one hand, while using another spoon in
the other hand to unseat his opponent’s onion.

And of course there was the Grand
Raffle at the end of the evening, plus the usual Snuff Bar and selection of
soaps, colognes and hair dressings in the bathrooms—untroubled by looters this
time, I’m pleased to say.

A big thank-you to all who came
and helped make it such a splendid evening.

Maigret Considered

At the monthly Club meeting on 4th December
historian Mr Sean Longden made his second trip to the podium, this time to
deliver a fond appreciation of Inspector Maigret, the pipe-smoking
crime-solving creation of Georges Simenon.

Sadly our projection facilities
were once again dogged by gremlins and the babbage device was unable to read Mr
Longden’s compact disc (probably just needed more coal). But Mr Longden
nevertheless painted an admirable word-portrait of a man who spends as much
time deciding which coat to wear or what hat to buy as he does solving crimes.
Which is just as well as he doesn’t seem to deduce the solutions—he just seems
to know who the villain is. He is also fond of a drink and resists such
insidious innovations as central heating.

11th November 2009

Yes We Can-Can!

The Club’s winter party is with us
in just ten days! Come and relive the giddy splendour of the Moulin Rouge
ofToulouse-Lautrec, an absinthe- and Champagne-fuelled orgy of high kicks and
low moral standards.

The party is a celebration of all
things French. It’s earlier than usual, on Saturday 21st November (so could not
really be called a Christmas party as such) though we are back at the ornate Punch
Tavern, site of last year’s Kredit Krunch Kabaret.

We’ll have musical delights from
chanteuse Maria Trevis and some Gallic accordian noodling, French-themed food,
plus the usual tomfool games with highly desirable prizes. Try your hand at Pin
the Legs Back On the Frog or the sinister Onion Battle. (We’re also working on
a game that involves blockading a port and preventing free trade at all costs.)
There will be prizes for the best costumes and perhaps a sudden blitzkrieg
prize for the first person to surrender to something or someone.

Our famous Grand Raffle will be
in evidence, of course, with prizes including some absinthe, some oil paints
and an easel, a beret, some garlic, cheese and snails, a model of the Eiffel
Tower, a set of boules, Asterix comics, French-flavoured books, CDs and DVDs,
plus a white flag and a packet of Gaulloises.

As usual entry is free to NSCMembers, including anyone who
joins on the night, and entry to the raffle is free but open to Members only.

Old Soldiers Spotted in Club Tie?

On Monday 26th October
members of the Normandy Veterans Association gathered for a service at
Westminster Abbey, to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day Landings. Gordon
Brown and Defence Secretary BobAinsworth
were apparently lurking in the background. Many think it will be the last
significant anniversary gathering of this kind, as the veterans’ numbers are
gradually depleted.

But we say there is clearly life
in the old dogs yet: in the picture below two of them appear to be sporting
Club Ties, a sure sign that they have the energy to get up no good. I also see
that they’ve awarded themselves almost as many medals as the NSCCommittee have done.

(As an addendum I have subsequently
been informed that the regimental tie in question is that of Her Majesty’s 17th
Regiment of Foot, The Royal Leicestershire Regiment. Thanks to E. W. Hutchings
for the gen.

Along Came a Cider…

Mr Ian White is a Member not only
of the New Sheridan Club but also of the Campaign for Real Ale, in which
capacity he has organised a number of educational pub crawls around hostelries
of note for the Club. On Saturday 3rd October he once again led a band of
Sheridanites on an ale trail—except this time, in keeping with the season,
there was an emphasis on real cider as well as real ale.

I missed the beginning of the
migration, so Idid not
glimpse the Harp in Covent Garden. By the time Ijoined
the group they were preparing to leave the second pub, Doggett’s Coat and Badge
by Blackfriars Bridge—a fairly unprepossessing modern building which Icould not bring myself to
photograph. The next stop was altogether more interesting: the New Forest Cider
Bar is a stall in Borough Market, a mecca for anyone after artisanal foodie
fayre. Their cider on tap came in dry, medium and sweet varieties—the medium
was pretty tart and the dry was guaranteed to rid you of that tiresome tooth
enamel. We stood around supping from plastic pint glasses and ogling the
lobsters on the seafood stall opposite.

Next stop was the Market Porter,
a proper indoor pub scarcely 50 feet away. Clearly it’s an establishment that
is proud of its guest ales, as the ceiling is studded with beer mats from past
guests.

The Spanish tapas bar Brindisa
was to have been next on the itinerary but it was declared too crowded so we
sloped on to the Wheatsheaf on Southwark Street. This subterranean drinking den
was once, Ibelieve, a
Davy’s Winebar, and the layout certainly seems reminiscent of one. We supped
ale and lobbed darts at a dart board. After that it was time for me to melt
away to another engagement, but the posse carried on to the last stop on the
route, the stalwart Royal Oak on Tabard Street, clearly a favourite of Mr
White’s as his trails usually seem to end up there.

Many thanks to Mr White for
organising yet another enjoyable and enlightening tour.

Conkerer Conquered

At the October meeting the original
scheduled talk by Matthew Howard, on The Big Siam: Oriental Excess in the East
Indies, was hastily shoved aside (and I’m not saying it was on the advice of
the Commision for Racial Equality) to make way for an impromptu conker
tournament. In the pursuit of complete fairness, Mr Scarheart sourced, drilled
and strung all the conkers himself. I myself missed most of this as I didn’t
arrive till about 9.45, but Mr Howard tells me that the official winner was
Lord Finsbury Windermere Compton-Bassett. (Mind you, I am pretty sure that
Jessie challenged Compton-Bassett to a bout at the very end and beat him,
arguably making her the champion.)

The longest bout was conducted
between Torquil and Curé Michael Silver, possibly because of equally matched
doggedness, determination and self-belief, but equally possibly because of
mutual languor and endless breaks to mix fresh cocktails. William Smith was
instantly dubbed William the Conkerer but in battle sadly failed to live up to
this name.

Despite the brutal reputation
that the game of conkers holds—it makes cage fighting look like a pillow
fight—the only injury of the evening was sustained by Robert Beckwith who
bellowed for ice for his hand (not his cider, as some supposed).

The dageuerreotype shows Fruity
(sensibly wearing goggles) attacking Luke, while in the background the epic
battle between Torqui and the Curé rumbles on.

Hackett Steals NSC Logo

Imagine the Committee’s horror when
we passed the windows of the Hackett emporium on Jermyn street to see, winking
at us from a polished vitrine, the tie and scarf displayed below. It was a cue
for synchronised monocle-popping, as you can imagine. The items are part of
Hackett’s Mayfair range for Autumn 2009 that “takes the modern gentleman from
day to evening with seamless ease”. At the expense of the NSC’s intellectual
property, it does.

It is just about conceivable that
the Hackett designers came up with the concept all by themselves but I think it
far more likely that they spotted our noble Brolly Roger design and decided to
purloin it. Needless to say, a stiff letter is on its way to Mr Hackett’s in
tray.

Mr Graves Steals the Show

Harold Hereward Graves, known in
his professional capacity as Paul Gazzoli, scored a point recently with a
letter to The Times.

This is taken from Numbers 10:35,
“may they who hate Thee flee from Thy face”, fugiant being the third person
plural present active subjunctive of fugio, “flee”. Fugent, however, is third
person plural present active subjunctive of fugo, “put to flight, rout, cause
to flee”, thus altering the meaning of the phrase considerably, to “let they
who hate Thee rout” — the object is lacking, so we might fill in “Thee” or “us”
or “Thine army” in place of “from Thy face”. Thus the Christians from whom this
was putatively plundered by pagans were, through their incorrect grammar,
asking for it. This only goes to show the danger posed by poor Latinity, as
King Alfred recognised only too well.

As our Government threatens
further cuts in education and the elimination of so-called pointless studies,
this small piece of bent metal should stand in our minds as a grim warning.

Paul Gazzoli

Department of Anglo-Saxon,

Norse and Celtic,

University of Cambridge

William IV In Trouble

Not the monarch, who is doubtless past caring but the public
house where we have been having our highly successful new run of Film Nights. I
had a phone call from Henry the landlord to say that he’d basically gone bust,
so he’d have to cancel our booked nights. However, he confidently predicted the
place would be up and running in no time and we might well be able to resume
our use of the Geography Room upstairs. Sadly at time of writing there has been
no response whenever I have telephoned the place.

Eventually we may have to find a
new home for our screenings, but I am inclined to persist with the William IV
if we can as I have encountered no place that is its equal, especially not for
no hire charge.